


Two Truths And A Lie

by anythingbutplatonic



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: 2x23 "Unthinkable", Episode Related, F/M, Missing Scene, episode reaction fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-25
Updated: 2015-09-25
Packaged: 2018-04-23 09:17:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4871386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anythingbutplatonic/pseuds/anythingbutplatonic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set post-2x23.</p>
<p>A look inside Felicity's head in the aftermath of Oliver's surprise "I love you" and the confusion that follows when she realizes that she has no idea whether or not he actually meant it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Truths And A Lie

In high school, and later in college, a popular icebreaker game that the teachers and professors liked to play on the first day of class was Two Truths and a Lie. 

The aim of the game was simple; the player whose turn it was made three statements about themselves, two of which were true and one that was a lie. The rest of the players then had to guess which ones were which. It was meant to be fun, a way of finding out things about your new classmates that you might otherwise never have known, a “bonding experience”, in the words of Felicity’s English teacher her sophomore year of high school. 

She still remembered what  _she_  had said about herself the first time she ever played the game.

_My middle name is Megan._

_I am a natural blonde._

_I am afraid of kangaroos._

Pretty straightforward, actually, since she had still worn her hair in long dark sheets down her back then, and wouldn’t even touch any kind of hair dye for another five years; by then, things would be drastically different. 

But this wasn’t about embarrassing high school memories or the fact that she hadn’t used peroxide until she was in her twenties; this was about something else entirely, something that made her heart race and her breath catch and her mind spin in all kinds of different directions like a spider’s web. 

Well, not something. Some _one_. A very tall, very muscular, very blue-eyed vigilante in a green hood by the name of Oliver Queen.

Because ever since they’d touched down in Starling City after ensuring that Slade was safely incarcerated in ARGUS’ specially-designed prison on Lian Yu, she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him.

And that was saying something, because she thought about him a lot. Not  _a lot,_ a lot, just...a lot. 

In the last forty-eight hours or so, she had thought of almost nothing else, even as Slade’s Mirakuru soldiers were laying waste to the city and time was running out, even as they rallied the League of Assassins - of all people! - behind them for help, there had only been one thing on her mind;  _did he mean it?_

And by “it”, she meant the fact that he had told her that he loved her, standing in the middle of the foyer of the Queen Mansion in almost total darkness, cut off from the churning chaos of the city by the huge double front doors and the almost eerie silence of a house that nobody was living in. 

“ _I love you.”_

He’d said those three little words with an almost careless ease, looking at her in that particular way of his that drove her crazy - though it didn’t seem like he was aware of that fact, oh  _no_ \- and the conviction in his voice slamming all the air from her lungs until she was certain she might never remember how to breathe ever again.  _Ever_. 

And then he’d pressed the syringe full of the Mirakuru cure into her hand, and the moment was gone. 

“ _Do you understand?”_

At the time, she’d been so shocked that she’d only managed to squeak out a tiny “Yes” before he was walking away from her, and she’d gasped for breath as the door swung shut and she’d been left alone in the empty grandeur of the Queen family home. 

He’d asked her if she understood, but now she wasn’t so sure that she did. 

She kept replaying the scene over and over in her mind, hoping to find some clarity, some detail that she’d missed or overlooked, something -  _anything_  - that would help her figure out just what the hell was going on between them. 

Felicity didn’t know what scared her the most; the fact that Oliver might love her, or the fact that he might not.

If he did, nothing would ever be the same again.

If he didn’t, she didn’t know how she could continue to be his partner-in-crime while knowing that her hopes had been dashed like glass shattering on impact from a rock thrown at a window. 

Because that was the truth, wasn’t it? That he had got her hopes up, made her think - made her wonder - whether she wasn’t the only one who felt  _something_  between them, something that ran deep beneath their platonic,  _working_  relationship like veins under the skin. 

_Attraction_. Sexual, romantic, platonic, it didn’t matter; it hung between them like a thread, bringing them together over and over again. 

A busted-up laptop riddled with bullet holes. A long, thin, and deadly-looking black arrow. An “energy drink” in a syringe that had turned out to be the drug Vertigo.

She shook her head and allowed herself a smile as she remembered that particular conversation.

“ _If it’s an energy drink, why is it in a syringe?”_

_A pause._

_“...I was out of sports bottles.”  
_

And really, what kind of excuse had  _that_  been? Definitely not one of his best, as far as really bad cover stories went. 

Then she had found him shot and bleeding in the backseat of her scarlet Mini Cooper, head-to-toe in the green leather of the Starling City Vigilante, a nasty gunshot wound in his shoulder and a silent plea for help in those piercing blue eyes of his that made her insides feel like molten wax. 

There was just...something about him that made her trust him. Made her confide in him. Made her want to help him. 

And it didn’t hurt that he was easy on the eyes, either.  _Definitely_  not. He was incredibly attractive and seemed to know it; and she found her heart beating faster, her breath getting shallower, every time he encroached on her personal space to talk to her or reach out for her, and her skin, where he touched her, seemed to burn beneath her clothes. 

But it wasn’t just about her enjoyment of watching him on the salmon ladder, or sparring with Dig or Roy, sweat glistening on his scarred chest and along the ridges of his muscles; it was about other things too, aside from the superficial ones - that she was perfectly entitled to,  _thank_  you very much, because if he was going to walk around half-naked, then she was going to stare. 

And oh, did she stare. Far too much. Once he got on that ladder, she was like a dog panting after its favourite toy, though she would never,  _ever_  tell him that. That damn ladder was hypnotic, and he along with it; she often wondered whether he knew she stared, and whether or not he liked that she did. 

Oliver was proud, and stubborn, and resilient. He liked things that he could control; those he couldn’t, he feared. He was charming, and knew how to attract people; but had a hard time forming connections with others, because he felt he didn’t deserve their affection. He was smart, though he might not look it at first glance. He was a terrible businessman, but brilliant with a bow and arrows. He didn’t like milk in his coffee. He rode a motorcycle and loved his sister more than she’d ever seen anyone love another person.

He was kind, and compassionate, in ways that even she hadn’t come to expect.  

But none of that would matter if he hadn’t meant it when he’d told her he loved her. 

Felicity wished that she could be eight years old again, plucking the petals from a flower while reciting the age-old rhyme;  _He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me. He loves me not_. Whichever the last petal landed on, that would be her answer. 

**_He loves me_.**

She thought of how he’d killed the Count to save her, breaking his vow not to take another life, in Tommy’s memory. 

**_He loves me not_.**

But he had Sara. He’d had Laurel, and Helena before that. What made her any different?

**_He loves me._ **

Felicity remembered his hand, warm on her cheek, and his reassurance that she would always be “his girl”. 

**_He loves me not_.**

He’d told her once that because of the life he lived, he couldn’t be with anybody that he could really care about. That it was safer to not be with anyone than to risk the life of an innocent person. 

**_He loves me_.**

_“Felicity, he had you and he was going to hurt you. There was no choice to make.”_

**_He loves me not._ **

The sun sparkling off the ocean on the beachfront on Lian Yu, both of them a little bruised and a lot worse for wear. 

“Talk about unthinkable. You and me, I mean.”

**_He loves me._ **

_“Slade took Laurel because he wants to kill the woman that I love.”  
_

_“So?”  
_

_“So he took the wrong woman.”_

**_He loves me._ **

_“I love you.”  
_

Now, if she were asked to play Two Truths and a Lie, she didn’t know what her lie would be; that Oliver Queen loved her, or that she  _didn’t_  love him, too. 


End file.
